■^-.T H E 



LETTER AND THE SPIRIT 



A BACCALAUREATE SERMON 



PREACHED IX 



Marqtjand Chapel, Princeton, N. J. 



J. U N E 8, 18 9 0. 



Rev. FRANCIS L. PATTON, D.D., l.L.l). 



PkKSIDF.NT of l-H,-. COI.I.EGR OF N. j. 



# 



THE 



LETTER AND THE SPIRIT 



A BACCALAUREATE SERMON 



PREACHED IN 



Marquand Chapel, Princeton, N. J. 

JUNE 8, 1890. 



Rev. FRANCIS L. PATTON, D.D., L.L.U, 

President of the College of N. J. 



0^:. 



IN EXCHANGE . 

JAN 21 1921 



The Letter and the Spirit. 



II. Cor. iii. 6. — " For the Letter killeth^ but the Spirit giveth Life'' 



There Is no doubt, I suppose, that when the Apostle 
made use of this famlHar antithesis he intended, in the 
first place, to distinguish between the Law and the 
Gospel ; between the written code, with its rigid require- 
ments which can only awaken a sense of helplessness and 
only intensify the feeling of loss, and the indwelling, 
grace-bestowing, comfort-giving Spirit. But it can 
hardly be questioned that the words of this verse may be 
properly used in a wider sense, and that this wider sense 
is at least implicitly recognized by the Apostle himself. 
I should only be illustrating the truth of the text under- 
stood in this broader sense, were I to insist upon a literal- 
ism of interpretation that would tolerate no application 
of it outside of the sphere within which it was originally 
employed ; and I think I can better serve the purpose I 
have in view to-day, and can better adapt my discourse to 
the circumstances of this time and place, by taking 
advantage of some of the more obvious contrasts which 
these words are so well fitted to suggest. 

T. It is true that the word pnciniia here has special 
reference to the Holy Spirit, but it also signifies the 
human spirit and with the word gramma as the other 



term of the antithesis, I think there Is nothing violent or 
strained In making the suggested contrast between 
Language and Thought the first topic for consideration. 

Thought and not the mode of Its expression, mind 
and not the drapery in which It Is enveloped, should be 
our first concern. It is fatal to elevating work to let 
energy terminate In the letter. The aim of the true 
scholar Is to go behind the letter to the spirit. The bare 
suggestion of language as the means of communicating 
thought presents to us one of the most wonderful facts In 
life. It is the commonplace after all that is the most 
mysterious. Thought leaps the chasm of two separate 
personalities and excites no wonder. We lay bare the 
secrets of our Inner life to each other and then wonder at 
actio in dista^ts and cavil at the possibility of divine com- 
munication. So easy is it to strain at the gnat and 
swallow the camel. 

To think and speak ; to have ideas and register 
them ; to make ourselves plain ; to find a common 
measure of thought among the many coins of speech ; 
to converse with our contemporaries in the morning 
newspaper and hold fellowship with the dead in the books 
that keep their memories alive — this, if we only stopped 
to consider It, Is the marvel of existence. A mystery, I 
grant, and one made no easier of solution by the suicidal 
philosopher who tries through pages of labored excogita- 
tion to reduce thought to mechanism and then sends his 
book with his compliments to the courteous reader, in the 
hope that he will think that the author is a thinker of un- 
common intellect in thus demonstrating with such con- 
vincing logic, and such array of physiological testimony, 
that there is no thought and no thinker at all. 



Thought is mind's protest against materialism. We 
need no other. Language is thought's portrait, the print 
of thought's finger. It is easy to see, therefore, why the 
study of language, as distinguished from literature, should 
occupy a high place in the Academic curriculum. It is of 
great moment to understand the forms of thought, to 
follow its curves and watch its subtleties and niceties of 
distinction as we are able to do after it has been hardened 
and colored in speech. You may learn a great deal of 
psychology from the Greek prepositions. The subjunc- 
tive mood will often prove a shorter road to the human 
mind than the psychometric experiments of Fechner and 
Wundt. We may, however, make too much of philology, 
and even though we had to be satisfied with less grammar, 
I would have more literature. Let us read Milton, 
rather than read about him, and read him as we love to 
read him, rather than at the snail's pace indicated by 
Ruskin. Give us the story of Achilles in the pages of 
Derby and Bryant if we must choose between an English 
translation and a few dog's-eared pages of the Greek 
original : — 

Ity iV aK.nov napa Siva rroA.v(f)^<rn(3oi.<) 'lo.onrjr 

The line is a picture ; the rhythm is exquisite ; the sound 
an echo of the sense. Give us time to follow Chryses as 
he moves sadly along the shore, and let this vision of 
beauty excuse us from the *' principal parts " of i^aivo ; 
for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. Trans- 
lation is difficult work, as we have been so recently 
reminded by Mr. Pater and Mr. Lowell. To do it well 
requires that we should know the letter, but it requires 
also — what is more dif^cult to attain — that we should 
catch the spirit of the author, that we should see with his 



eyes and rethink his thoughts. It is a pretty conceit of 
Marion Crawford which leads him, in one of his later 
works, to represent his hero as taking advantage of the 
recent advances in electrical science — thereby removing 
the barriers that separate him from the unseen world— 
and holding face to face fellowship ''with the immortals." 
This is exactly what a liberal education is intended to do. 
This is what it has done for you, if you have improved 
your opportunities here, unless our methods are deplorably 
bad. This is why we learn Latin and Greek, and master 
the difficulties of vocabulary. I do not deny that it is of 
advantage to know the laws of phonetic change, and that 
there is intellectual training in the knowledge of word 
forms. But when classical training is useful only as dumb- 
bells and parallel bars are useful, it is writing a commentary 
on my text. Master syntax for disciplinary ends ; and 
master it also, as Richard de Bury says, that we may 
thereby open royal roads into literature. But remember 
that the thought is more than the word ; that at best the 
word is but a symbol, a suggestion of the thought, and 
rarely its equivalent. He who reads literally reads poorly. 
Even jurisprudence, the science that holds speech to 
strictest account, admits that there are times when we 
must not only judge what a man intends to say by what 
he says, but what he says by what he obviously meant to 
say. HcBret in litera, hcBret i7i cortice. There is too little 
classical study of the purely literary kind among us. We 
either know^s specialists and know little else, or we know 
practically nothing. And it is probably hard to unite the 
functions of the general and the special scholar. Few men 
can expend energy on the letter sufficient to write the notes 
to Mayor's Juvenal, and then write an" advertisement"to the 



volume that quivers In every line with sympathetic Interest 
in the questions of the day. 

I say nothing regarding letters which is not true of 
science also. For the facts which the man of science 
handles are only the letters with which he is trying to 
spell out the thought embodied in them. He may amuse 
himself with the shapes of these letters, put them in 
bundles and give them names, but so long as he is simply 
engaged with facts, he is employed in business no better 
than playing chess or solving puzzles. It is when he hits 
upon some key to Nature's cipher; it is when he is using 
his facts in verification of an hypothesis that stands for 
thought that he is doing work worthy of scientific fame. 
Otherwise he is only a census taker in the kingdom of 
nature ; a cataloguer in the library of truth, writing tittes 
and reading the backs of books. 

Let not the humanist, however, speak to the disparage- 
ment of science, for if he is only using language as 
material for the exercise of his own thought, if the results 
of his labors are not the basis of generalizations that stand 
for thought, then he is simply collecting facts, gathering 
useless knowledge, printing interminable masses of un- 
readable material. And indeed this, to a large extent, is 
the condition of things to-day. We are over-specializing ; 
and the danger is that our scholars will become simply 
operatives under a great system of contract labor ; full of 
opinions on subjects of which we have no knowledge, and 
full of knowledge on subjects that give no basis for 
opinion. We are overwhelmed with material and in 
danger of being submerged in the mass of facts which we 
cannot reduce to system. How often, as we see ambition 
spurred to new endeavor, are we reminded of these words 
of the text : The letter killeth ; the spirit giveth life. 



Ah, Science ! you want fact. You proclaim the 
sovereignty of fact, the reign of law, the almightiness of 
induction, the empire of sense. Your votaries have re- 
duced history to science, and philosophy to science, and 
religion to science, and language to science ; and when 
you have done all, what have you gained ? A mass of 
unorganized material ; a box of Chinese puzzles ; a 
rubbish heap of monographs on Greek adverbs, Coptic 
manuscripts, Babylonian pottery, the Pythagorean theory 
of the imiverse, and so forth, without order and without 
plan — or else there is a thought, an idea, a generalization 
behind it all. The destiny of it all is death and the 
dunghill, or else there is some informing, quickening idea 
to give it shape and comeliness. Do your best : the 
philosopher, the apostle of the idea, is needed to make 
these dry bones live. 

Whose thought then lies behind this language of 
fact ? Is it your subjective state that you have been impos- 
ing upon nature as the law of her operations when you 
have formulated the doctrine of gravitation? Is it your 
subjectivity that imposes a meaning upon Hamlet and 
Faust, no thanks to Shakespeare and Goethe? Will 
you split the difference between the two rival philosophers 
by an arbitrary decision to be objective in your recogni- 
tion of the fact, and subjective in your explanation of the 
fact? Or will you see behind the letter the spirit ; behind 
the fact the idea that gives meaning to the fact and makes 
you a sharer in the thought of God ? I do not wonder 
that the man of science magnifies his office and feels proud 
of his high calling. Back of the barriers of speech, indeed, 
that melt away with our knowledge of a foreign tongue 
stand ''the immortals," and we may converse with them 



to our heart's content. But back of the syllables of 
science and waituig only for the spirit of reverence for its 
enjoyment lies fellowship with God. 

The literary artist has recalcitrant material to deal 
with, With the author thought is too volatile, and with 
the translator language is too opaque. So that between 
the incapacity of the containing vessel and the chance of 
spilling in our attempts to decant it into another, we run 
the risk of losing some of the wine of genius. This is 
true of human thought ; how much more true must it be 
of divine thought. We cannot give too much attention 
then to the very words in which our Bible is written, and 
the more fully we believe in its inspiration the more* 
anxious we shall be to have a correct text and a close 
translation. But we may have both and miss the spirit of 
Revelation. We may have a bald literalism of rendering 
that sacrifices good English to Greek idiom, and saves 
the letter at the expense of the spirit. We may load our 
memory with ''various readings" and be so microscopic in 
our study of the text as to be unable to see the full con- 
tour of a Divine idea. We may carry reverence for the 
Word to the extent of being undiscriminating worshippers 
of words, and by our unintelligent literalism miss the 
meaning that the words convey. Wlien I find men treat- 
ing metaphor as fact and reading poetry as they would 
construe an act of Congress, seeking a spiritual sense in 
every common-place expression, missing the point of the 
parable of the prodigal son by asking who was the '' elder 
brother," and invoking the joint assistance of chemistry 
and the book of Leviticus in the interpretation of the 
parable of the leaven, I feel that Matthew Arnold, with 
all his faults, at least deserves credit for reminding us that 



the Bible is to be treated as literature. But we must go 
further before we can be said to have passed beyond the 
letter in our study of Scripture. For though as literature, 
it may be read with due regard to the historical conditions 
under which it was produced, with proper attention to 
differences of style and form of composition, we have 
not read it as we should when we have mastered its 
geographical details, studied its archaeology, learned to 
prize the beauties of Isaiah and Job, or appreciate the 
hieh moral level of the Sermon on the Mount. '1 o 
regard the Bible simply as literature provokes in me a 
feeling akin to that which I have for the system once in 
vogue of making the Gospel of John an easy introduction 
to the study of Greek. We degrade the book by teach- 
ing it under false pretenses. We dishonor truth when we 
teach it with a suppressio veri. I am in full sympathy 
with the idea that the Bible — the linglish Bible if you 
like that way of describing it better — should have a place 
in the college curriculum, but I want it understood that it 
is to be taught with distinct regard to its Divine authority, 
and the great doctrines of Redemption that it contains. 

You have made but a poor use of your facilities here, 
my friends, if you are not able to make the distinction I 
have named. This indeed is no small part of education. 
We have tried to train you so as to bring you under the 
power of ideas. We have aimed to educate you so that 
you may become scholars and not pedants ; jurists and 
not pettifoggers ; men of science and not the bottle 
washers of a laboratory ; theologians and not textualists ; 
religious men who think again through God's word the 
thoughts of God, and not dealers in cant phrases or slaves 
of a stupid literalism. 



lO 



2. The same antithesis with which we are dealing 
may serve also to stand for the contrast between the 
accidental and the essential in matters of literary judg- 
ment and of religious opinions. Print does not discrimin- 
ate. Even punctuation is a modern device, and juris- 
prudence disdains it to this day. It gives no weight to 
the commas and semi-colons with which we sprinkle our 
pages, sometimes in default of a clear style, or a correct 
syntax. It allows no vulgar italics to lend artificial 
emphasis to what is written, but leaves the thought to 
make its way to the mind with no other presupposition 
than the intelligence of the reader. This is indeed often 
a large demand, but there seems to be as yet no sufficient 
substitute for brains ; and to one normally furnished in 
this regard it is a self-evident proposition that though the 
printed" word does not say so, all thoughts are not of 
equal value nor worthy of the same emphasis. No obliga- 
tion rests upon us, for instance, to treat all the poet's 
verse as of equal beauty and force because he has not 
seen fit to show any favoritism to the children of his brain. 
It is not our fault that there are only three lines worth re- 
membering in Wordsworth's Peter Bell. All that is said 
is not worth repeating. All human deeds are not worth 
recording. Worthless when new, they do not gain im- 
portance with the lapse of time. The phonograph that 
listens to-day and reproduces the nonsense of conversa- 
tion a hundred years hence will amuse, but it will not 
edify. It occurs to me to say this when I consider the 
prevalent mania for original research. Just now it is 
affecting historians and men of letters. You may know 
history — you may have your Gibbon, your Hallam and 
your Freeman at your fingers' ends, but you are no his- 



II 



torian unless you have studied the sources. If, however, 
you have discovered a manuscript that will add a new 
chapter to the life of some tenth-rate Cavalier or Round- 
head, if you can come forth from your labors with the dust 
of an old library on your fingers, you have earned the title to 
fame. But why ? Why discriminate thus against the man 
who knows much in favor of him who produces little ? 
Do I deny that your work is good ? By no means. That 
you have brought something new to light, and so have 
made a contribution to knowledge ? No. Or that your 
work has given you good training in the use of tools? 
No. Nor would I deny that it is a useful thing for our 
young civil engineers to survey the college campus every 
year, or measure the Brooklyn Bridge. 1 am only think- 
ing that you lack perspective ; that you are mistaking 
pains and trouble and a monopoly of useless information 
for history ; that you are in danger of putting all facts upon 
the same level and of ranking the genealogy of a Mayflower 
family with the Norman Conquest. You are deceived by 
the letter and miss the spirit. You have adopted Grad- 
grind's philosophy. The demand is for facts, and so it 
comes to pass that in the examination paper Oklahoma 
counts for as much as Thermopylae, and the date of the 
last constitutional amendment is thought to have as good 
a right to a vacant memory cell as A. D. 1453 or 1688. 

We read books and study the history of opinion often 
with the same disregard of proportion — remembering 
what we ought to forget and forgetting what we ought 
to remember ; making no allowance for circumstances and 
giving the same value to obiter dicta that we accord to 
reasoned opinions. Find Calvin tripping in a casual re- 
mark, then vilify his system : this is what men do. Or 



12 



because one calls himself a disciple of Augustine, hold 
him responsible for all that Augustine taught, as though 
one must believe in the virtues of tar-water because he is 
a Berkleyan. 

Uneducated men, perhaps, find it hard to make the 
distinctions between essence and accident here referred 
to. All statements appear to them like items on a ledger 
to be reckoned in the same way. But educated men 
ought to know better. They ought to know that a man 
can be a Lutheran without believing all that Luther be- 
lieved, or accept the Hegelian conception of the universe 
without sympathizing in detail with Hegel's peculiar- 
views. It ought not to be difficult to understand that a 
creed statement may be accurate in doctrinal content 
though colored by the time in which it was written, and 
dealing with conditions of thought that no longer exist. 
And it must also be evident that it would be hard to avoid 
the appearance of anachronism if we undertook to weave 
the thoughts of this generation into a document that on 
its title-page purports to have been written two hundred 
and fifty years ago. A little exercise of judgment, however, 
a little effort to distinguish between essence and accident, 
abiding fact and accidental setting, in short, to read the 
spirit in the letter would save all the trouble. We may as 
well learn to exercise this power of judgment on the creeds, 
for we shall have to exercise it on the Scriptures. All 
Scripture is inspired, but it does not all possess the same 
religious value All Scripture is truth, but all Scriptural 
truth is not of equal importance. Essential to the organic 
structure of the Bible all of it undoubtedly is, but not 
equally essential to spiritual life and religious education. 
When men say they wish the Bible to be taught without 

13 



doctrine, I reply that the doctrines of the Bible* are more 
important than much of the Bible itself. The sense of 
Scripture is the Scripture, and rather than miss the sense 
we could afford to do without certain forms of Bible 
knowledge. There is in the Bible as in other literature 
what may be called the essential and the accidental, and 
it is an act of intelligence to distinguish between them. I 
read the Cosmogony and get out of it the doctrine of 
creation, the ascent of life, the supremacy of man and his 
primaeval purity. I am willing to fill up the great 
categories of Genesis with the help of science and so 
make the generalizations that follow the study of one of 
God's books help in the interpretation of the other. I 
read in the words of the Saviour the generic ideas that 
should control social existence and the great principles 
that should guide conduct, but I do not suppose that the 
illustration of a principle should be construed with literal 
exactness. I do not expect to handle venomous reptiles 
with impunity. I do not expect faith to supersede medical 
treatment or cure oreanic disease ; and I do not find 
either in the Sermon on the Mount or in the Apostolic 
community of goods an argument for socialism and the 
denial of the rights of property. I believe that Paul was 
inculcating an important principle when he discouraged 
the appearance of Christians as litigants in heathen courts ; 
but I would not on that account conclude that all litiga- 
tion is sin, and that the legal profession is incompatible 
with Christianity. To be sure the distinction between 
essence and accident involves serious responsibility, for in 
attempting to make it we may err. I am sure that Arnold 
erred and that his literary judgment was warped by his 
prejudices when he made ethics the main thing in Scrip- 

14 



ture and represented the dogmas of Christianity as the 
accidents of PauHne teachino^. For what is the Bible ? 
What is the evolution of Biblical ideas but the growth of 
a few great dogmatic conceptions ? The essence of Scrip- 
ture, the core of the Old Testament and the New, is the 
doctrine that without the shedding of blood there is no 
remission of sins, and that God was in Christ reconciling 
the world unto Himself not imputing unto men their tres- 
passes. It is the Divine purpose that brings the Bible 
into line with the facts of the material world. It is the 
Incarnation that gives organic character to Scripture. It 
is human guilt that constitutes the great presupposition of-. 
Revelation. It is the doctrine of faith as man's response 
to the overtures of love that meets the exiorencies of man's 
moral nature and makes the Bible the best and greatest 
message that man ever had. Why, then, do men tell me 
that they wish the Bible taught religiously but not 
doctrinally ? Why do educated men who have been 
taught to distinguish between, the letter and the spirit 
show such proneness to mistake when they touch religious 
themes ? Yet the world is full of men who speak in this 
Avay. These are the men who stand in our pulpits and 
preach on the patience of Job and the moral courage of 
Daniel ; who find material for sentimental sermons in the 
seasons, and entertaininor sermons in the social follies of 
the day, and practical sermons on the importance of sleep 
•or the need of restricting immigration, but who are silent 
respecting the tremendous fact of sin and the dogmatic 
significance of atoning blood. I do not say that such 
men are handling the Word of God deceitfully, for I am 
willing to have them plead guilty if they prefer to an un- 
5cholarly stupidity that prevents them from seeing that 

15 



the bleeding Christ is the central fact of Scripture. Let 
me beg you, gentlemen, to heed this lesson of the text. 
Cultivate a wise discrimination. Read the best books. 
Seize upon master thoughts. Get hold of the big end of 
the questions that invite your scrutiny. Distinguish be- 
tween what is vital and what is of no importance. Garner 
the wheat ; let the chaff go. Rest - your opinions on 
broad and deep rational foundations. Follow this method 
in religion. A few principles, a few facts, carry the whole 
fabric of Christianity. Follow the great trend of evidence 
and do not halt for minor difficulties. Let the great out- 
lying facts of Christianity determine your faith, and do 
not let trifles feed your doubt. You are sticking in the 
bark, you may be sure, when you let a textual difficulty, 
or an historical discrepancy, or a hard question in ethics, 
or a dogmatic mystery hinder your acceptance of the his- 
toric Christ as the Saviour of the world. 

3. I come now to the consideration of another dis- 
tinction suggested by the text. 

It is difficult to resist the feeling that there was in 
Paul's mind the contrast between the rigid fixity of the 
letter on the one hand and the plastic spontaneity of the 
spirit on the other. Litera scripta manet. The written 
word does not change. But the living organism is con- 
stantly adjusting itself to new conditions, and changing to 
suit them. We have then the fixed and the variable, un- 
bending law, and changing life. The history of the 
world, of society, of religious opinion, is to a large ex- 
tent the history of these two factors in their relations to 
each other. The leo^al code becomes too narrow to suit 
the exigencies of an expanding life and it changes in fact 
but not in form. The needed work is done, but the forms 

16 



of law are saved by legal fiction. Ubi jics ibi remedium ; 
but there is no remedy at common law, and equity finds 
one through the edict of the Prsetor or the decisions of 
the Chancellor. We have a written constitution as the 
basis of government, and the powers of the co-ordinate 
branches of government are defined. But time develops 
the old conflict between the unyielding law and the living 
organism, with the odds, as Professor Wilson shows, in 
favor of the organism. We formulate our faith in creed 
statements, and after a century or two find that the 
Church and the creed are not in exact accord. There is 
nothing to wonder at. It is the old question of the letter 
and the spirit. The letter has controlled the life. It has. 
given the law to its variations. Political development in 
this land will follow the lines of the Constitution. Theo- 
logical development will follow the lines of the creed that 
controls it. Unless the letter goes into the life of the or- 
ganism it will become a dead letter ; and if it goes into it, 
it will be modified and colored by circumstances of time 
and place. Now this question of the fixed and the vari- 
able is a much larger one than that of creed revision. It 
is at the root of nearly all the great questions of to-day. 
Men are realizing as never before the solidarity of man- 
kind. The old Pelagian conception of individualism is 
abandoned and there is a tendency to go to the opposite 
extreme. Individual opinion is hushed in the presence of 
advancing waves and irresistible movements, as they are 
called, and we are warned against the folly of trying to 
stop the rising tide. In the case of very advanced 
thinkers this worship of the Zeitgeist is associated with the 
denial of all a priori ideas. Standards of measurement 
there are none. The movement is recognized, but there 

17 



is no criterion by which to judge it, and the ideas that 
limit it and give it shape are ignored. Men say one must 
study the facts in an historical spirit and gather our in- 
duction out of what we see. The science of ethics be- 
comes the science of what is, rather than of what ouo^ht to 
be, and if a doctrine of right survives at all, it is the 
doctrine that whatever is, is rio-ht. " In the name of rea- 
son I protest against this tendency of thought. As a 
sovereign thinker within the realm of my own activities, 
I refuse to abdicate under the terrorism of popular senti- 
ment. I refuse to say that because the avalanche is irre- 
sistible, therefore it is right. I refuse to drown my 
reason in a tidal wave. And when any idea in philosophy, 
or politics, or theology is " in the air," I claim the right 
to examine its credentials and scrutinize its claims before 
I give it my acceptance. Historic movements, as well as 
the actions of individual men, must be judged by fixed 
principles. It is easy then for me to define my position 
in regard to what is called progressive theology. Will 
you tie the Church to the letter or give her the free life 
of the spirit ? How will you adjust the relations between 
the letter and the spirit; the Church and the creed; the 
organism and the law of its development ? According to 
Schleiermacher, the New Testament is only the recorded 
religious experience of the Apostolic age, genetically re- 
lated to the ages following, but giving no rubric and irrf- 
posing no law. It follows, then, that there is no standard 
of faith, that truth is relative, and that the Christian or- 
ganism is a law unto itself. The Roman Catholic, again, 
says that the organism is infallible and can speak in the 
present tense. It is not necessary, therefore, to believe 
that all Divine revelation is contained in the Bible. 

i8 



Transubstantiation came by way of doctrinal evolution 
with the second council of Nice and Papal infallibility 
within the present generation. The doctrine of evolution 
applied to theology by Cardinal Newman helps Rome to 
adjust the relation between the fixed and the variable. 
Protestants, however, have the written word as their only 
rule of faith. Chanelne taste cannot obliterate Its doctrines. 
Organic drifts cannot vacate words of their historic sense. 
We cannot eliminate doctrines because we do not like 
them, or Insert new ones because popular sentiment calls 
for them. What Is written Is written. The Christian 
consciousness can no more change the meaning of a 
Greek word than It can upset the multiplication table.^ 
There Is no legal fiction that can modify or change the Word 
of God. W^hen men say, as In effect they do, that the old 
conception of a Sovereign God does not suit our republi- 
can Ideas, they only blaspheme. And when by and by 
they will seek to dethrone Him and plainly say that each 
generation must elect its own Ruler and dictate his ad- 
ministrative policy, they will only carry to their logical 
consequences some of the pre\alent ideas of to-day. 1 do 
not deny, however, that important truth Is hinted at in 
the doctrine known as the Christian Consciousness. I 
am no advocate of ecclesiastical Immobility. The Christian 
Church Is not an exact copy In .mode of worship, methods 
•of administration and form of government of the Church 
of the New Testament. We have discontinued the holy 
kiss, and feet washing Is no part of Christian hospitality. 
We have salaried ministers and surpliced choirs, neither 
being known to the Apostolic Church. We have tried to 
foster the Apostolic spirit and perpetuate Apostolic Ideas, 
but the Church has altered her mode of life and work to 

19 



suit altered conditions of society. Paul said that under 
certain circumstances he would refuse the meat offered in 
sacrifice to idols, and would not drink wine that had any 
idolatrous associations. Interpret him literally and his 
words have no application to modern life, for the con- 
ditions that controlled his decision no longer exist. 
Change his decision into a mandate of abstinence and at 
once you tyrannize over the conscience and rob the act of 
abstinence of all ethical significance. Generalize the 
statement, however, and you have the great law of al- 
truistic morality which, after all abatements for selfishness 
have been made, is the most potent factor in our practical 
life. And so with doctrine. The dogmas of Christianity 
are fixed. The Bible does not change and we have no 
extra- Biblical revelation. But a dogma that is only read 
in the Bible or stated and subscribed to in a creed is only 
a dead letter. It must go into our life and be part 
of our intellectual and moral experience. But going 
-into our individual and our organic life it adjusts 
itself to changing conditions, although unchanged 
itself. It will be read with a different emphasis 
in different periods ; it will be interpreted in the 
light of the burning questions of those periods ; it will 
be brought into relation with science and philosophy and 
acquire fresh interest from generation to generation from 
the new polemic conditions that are constantly emerging. 
Paul's vocabulary was affected by his contact with philo- 
sophy. Ours will be. The attempt to eliminate philo- 
sophy from theology is a vain attempt. The two de- 
partments deal largely with the same subjects and cover 
common ground. All the material, whatever be its 
source, whatever be its authority, that goes to make our 



20 



theory of the universe, must pass into our Hfe and bear 
the impress of our thought ; and as we think in philosophy 
so we shall be compelled to think in theology. We 
handle the same questions regarding God, freedom, and 
immortality that Paul did, that Augustine did, that 
Thomas Aquinas did, that Calvin did, and though the 
Scriptures have not changed and our reading of them, 
so far as these topics are concerned, is not ma- 
terially different from that of the men that have 
been named, we see the same truth under different condi- 
tions. Our heretics are not Cerinthus and Celsus, but 
Spencer and Kuenen. Our foe is not credulity, but Ag- 
nosticism. And as conditions change, our mode of pre-^ 
senting the unchangeable truth must also change. Re- 
member, however, that if the letter without the life is 
dead, the life needs the letter to give law to its movement. 
Do not be deceived by the cry that the voice of the people 
is the voice of God. Do not hastily assume that every 
great movement is an inspired movement. We have no 
personal infallibility. We believe in no corporate infalli- 
bility. We have no faith in the inspiration of large 
masses of men. When, therefore, under the influence of 
those who would have us put our faith in the organism 
rather than tie it to the written word, we begin to lose 
faith in the authority of Scripture, we give up our only 
basis of Christian certitude. 

4. The letter killeth, the spirit giveth life. Outward 
Rule and inward Principle are the two great agencies that 
operate on human conduct and they seem contrasted in 
in the text. There is the inner principle in bent of incli. 
nation and dominant purpose seeking expression in our 
spontaneities ; and here is the objective code by which we 



seek to guide our life and which is put before us as an 
instructive and restraining influence. The world, says Mr. 
Lecky, is governed by its ideals. It is what we love to do 
that we do well. By help of rule alone men write no books 
and paint no pictures that wear the stamp of genius. They 
perform no acts of heroism in grudging compliance with 
law ; they shine in none of the beauties of high and holy 
character when they have simply schooled themselves to 
follow another's will. Work done in conformity with rule 
is drudgery and a weariness of the flesh. There is the 
morality of principle and the morality of outward conform- 
ity. That there is a place for the morality of externalism 
and precept, of law and obedience to command, I do not 
doubt, yet I sometimes think that life is made more 
burdensome than it need be, and that we hinder rather than 
help the higher interests of morality by the excessive 
multiplication of rules. The State goes as far as it ought 
in encroaching upon the freedom of the individual, the 
Church is taking liberties with the rights of conscience in 
saying that its members shall do this and shall not do 
that. We go to college and a code of instructions is the 
first lesson we are required to learn. We enter business 
and we find ourselves girt about by rule. We are more 
unwilling every day to assume that men will act right from 
principle and more disposed to think that they love to do 
wrong. Wholesale suspicion is the law of society. We 
are multiplying the machinery of detection. We cry, Who 
will keep the keepers ? We are insuring ourselves at 
increasing cost against the dishonesty of those whom we 
have trusted. We watch the clerk at his desk, and the 
student in his examination. We put a bell-punch in the 
hands of the conductor and set traps for the night watch- 



22 



man. In forms more or less visible and in ways more or 
less irritating to the feelings we proclaim our inability to 
trust men and our conviction that all men are liars. 
Necessary all this may be for protection, though I still 
believe that we owe more to conscience than to all our 
complicated machinery of police. But the trouble is that 
men suppose that all this is moral education. There is 
an impression that you make men moral when you make 
them fear to do wrong and that by repressing wrong- 
doing you are elevating character. Make wrong-doing so 
difficult that right-doing will be easier and It is thought you 
w^ll make men moral. And undoubtedly a great deal of 
the world's morality Is of this sort. A man obeys the^law. 
because he fears the penalty. He will lose his place, or 
incur the odium of society or be visited with social ostracism, 
or miss his diploma, and therefore he will do as he Is told. 
And there are good men who fail to see that there Is no 
morality in this. Not only do they fail to see It, but the 
opinion seems to be gaining ground that we can build up 
character by this system of externallsms. Men not only 
obey laws Imposed by society for Its own protection, but 
they take pledges, make promises, multiply vows for their 
own edification, and In place of the freedom of the spirit they 
are going back to the legalism of an older dispensation, 
are rejoicing in the bondage of the letter. They should 
know, however, that enforced obedience is not moral edu- 
cation. Character is an endogenous plant and grows from 
within. Military training teaches men to obey law, but It 
does not teach them to love It. Deserters are shot ; so 
the soldier does not desert. That Is all. Kant Is right. 
The law that comes from without Is not ethical. There 
is no morality In doing right through calculation of con- 

23 



sequences. Hence only self-legislated law is moral. 
Though it be God's law it must be autonomous before it 
is ethical. It must address the conscience and be ap- 
proved as good. It must become a maxim of reason and 
not a mere command. For the letter killeth, but the 
Spirit giveth life. The State, of course, must protect it- 
self and its main end is therefore not moral education. 

■t 

This must be left to the Church. But what is to be our 
aim in the administration of a College ? Shall we con- 
sider the good order of the organization, or the moral 
improvement of the student ? It might be easy to do either; 
it may be hard to combine the two ; but we must combine 
them. There must be rules, but they should be few, and the 
application of them should address the conscience. We 
must prepare men for the franchises which they are so 
soon to inherit by respecting their manhood and avoiding 
all petty legislation. We must protect the organism and 
at the same time labor for the good of the individual. 
We must hold law subservient to the end for which it is 
enacted and bend the rule if it be necessary in order to 
save the man. We must consider, it is true, the welfare 
of the mass, but we must sometimes, if need be, leave the 
ninety-and-nine, and care for the one who has gone 
astray. 

The college student is ingenuous, as a rule. He makes 
mistakes and falls into mischief or sin. But the case is 
rare when you do not find something in him that draws 
you to him. He is frank. He will admit that he has abused 
kindness, trifled with good nature and acted meanly. He 
is sorry that he did so and his climax of regret is gener- 
ally the thought of his mother's anguish and his father's 
sorrow. I have a large place in my heart for the man 

24 



who is capable of this fiHal love. But, my brother, you 
must stand on higher ground than this. You are going 
out to face the temptations of the world. You will be 
confronted with the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, 
and the pride of life. It Is not enough that you recognize 
the authority of the outward law. You should make It an 
Inner principle. It Is not enough that wrong conduct be 
avoided because It Is dishonorable and will bring disgrace. 
Learn to avoid it, because It is wrong. Learn to do right, 
because It Is riorht. Learn to feel the sanctions of a higher 
morality and when your evil-doing fills you with regret, let 
It be because you have sinned against God and put a stain 
upon your soul. 

5. And now. Gentlemen of the Graduating Class, 
let me say a single closing word. This week marks an 
important era in the calendar of your life. It means the 
severance of old ties ; the full assumption of personal 
responsibility, and the facing of the future. We have 
tried hard to fit you for the work of life. We have not 
done what we might have doae ; partly perhaps through 
our neglect, partly also through your neglect. But to 
some extent in all of you, I trust, and to a large extent In 
most of you, I know, our aim has been realized. In 
sending you out into the world we are making a contribu- 
tion to its working force of which we have no reason to 
be ashamed. We have tried to make the education we 
have given you a commentary upon the words that I have 
chosen for my text. We have tried to foster In you high 
Ideals in literature and hieh aims In science. We have tried 
to discipline your powers so that you will see the parts of 
Truth in their proper relations to each other and in just pro- 
portion. We have tried to show that the unchanging word 



of God is not a fossil to be laid upon the shelf, but the 
directing principk of the life, the inspiration of its move- 
ment and the law of its variation. We have tried to 
teach you also that the essence of all morality is a self- 
enunciated law of obligation, commanding without condi- 
tion and despising calculation. And we have not forgotten 
in the services of this sanctuary that the contrast between 
the letter and the spirit, bears witness also to another 
contrast between Law and Gospel, to which reference 
was made in the beginning of this discourse. The apostle 
did not mean to disparage the Law when he contrasted it 
with the Gospel. The Gospel did not supersede the Law, 
it only supplemented it. The Law is holy, just and 
good. It came from God and is the expression of his 
will. It is perfect but unrelenting. It tells us what we 
ought to do. It sets before us an ideal that excites our 
admiration and provokes despair. You accept it as just 
but you cannot comply with it. You resolve and fail. 
You promise and break your vow. You make an effort 
and fall short. But the Law accepts no excuse and makes 
no allowance. There is no pity in its tones. It meets 
your contrition with no encouraging word. Its face is 
rigid and its voice is hard. Your passing grade, it tells 
you. Is a hundred and you have failed. That is all it has 
to say. It measures, it does not pity. It tabulates results, 
it does not forgive. The Law is the embodiment of 
God's will, but there is also another embodiment of that 
will. And when conscious of your failure you go to Jesus 
and say, 'Oh Master, I know I ought to have done better, 
and I feel ashamed,' then will come a look of such exquisite 
tenderness upon his face that will say before the words 
are spoken: Thy sins are forgiven thee; go in peace. 

26 



When after fruitless endeavor to learn the lessons of life 
and do its work we go to him and say: ' Oh Divine Teacher, 
I would fain learn but I am very slow, and my poor 
powers are not equal to this high task,' he will say to you 
again : ' have patience, child, and I will teach thee. I will 
put my Spirit within thee. I will perfect my strength in 
thy weakness.' The Law came by Moses but Grace and 
Truth came by Jesus Christ. Have fellowship with 
Christ. Walk with him. Turn ever to him for comfort, 
for strength, for guidance. Serve him while you live and 
by and by you shall be like him, and you shall see him as 
he is. 



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